PvXwiki:Project Standardized Testing/Party Size 6

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• Archived Test Reports

A testing route for party size 6 teams and the results with various teams.

Preface

The goal is to find general use builds for missions and vanquishing which support all common builds of a certain type, i.e. weapon based melee builds or offensive casters. In order to make general builds they are tested against the more troublesome foes found in party size 6 missions, quests and vanquishing. The assumption is that builds which can deal with those foes very well are likely to be suitable for the entirety of party size 6 content, excluding Titan quests and Winds of Change.

• Zen Daijun. Mix of AoE caster pressure, physical single target pressure and out of combat pressure. Teams which have trouble here will probably also struggle against imps and drakes in prophecies, so dealing well with Zen Daijun is a hard requirement for teams to pass the tests.
• Thirsty River. Forgotten have a somewhat balanced team setup and are encountered in all three crystal desert missions.
• The Wilds. Best place for a quick test against toucher scarabs; also features some wind riders, which else aren't accessible until far into a mission/area.
• Haiju Lagoon, Miki the Skull Spirit. Crimson Skull appear in large numbers and thus inflict much pressure.
• Nebo Terrace, Cerris. Test against war in kryta foes without requiring a war in kryta story quest.
• Skyward Reach. Test against defensive foes and hydras.

Estimated testing time 40–60 minutes.

Testing Areas

Zen Daijun (mission) Do the entire mission. Fight both groups north of the temple at once. Note your time.	Haiju Lagoon Enter from Zen Daijun. Go to the center of the map and fight Miki the Skull Spirit and surrounding foes. Note: Factions characters who have accepted or finished The Captured Son might face more or less foes. Note: Depending on your progress in Winds of Change you'll have to accept Memories of Purity for this section.
War in Kryta Enter from Beetletun, keep right and fight your way through to Cerris. Take /age.	The Wilds (mission) Keep left, lure 2–3 groups of moss scarabs.
Thirsty River (mission) Do the entire mission, take /age.	Skyward Reach Enter from Destiny's Gorge, fight through the centaurs until you reach hydras.

Test Results

Ideally you submit your results on this page before voting on a build. Don't be afraid of going into detail, as it will help making this project a success. You can use this formatting template:

;Tested by ~~~
<pvxbig>
:'''Zen Daijun''': 
:'''Thirsty River''': 
:'''The Wilds''': 
:'''Haiju Lagoon''': 
:'''War in Kryta''': 
:'''Skyward Reach''':
'''Rating''': # effectivity, # universality. Player build used for the tests: 
{{clear}}<br />
</pvxbig>

Team - 5 Hero BiP Melee Elementalist Support (talk · rate)

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Tested by Krschkr (talk)

Zen Daijun: Solid results. The team is stable due to blind, two sources of weakness and three (potential) AoE knockdowns; adding a BiP healer, ST prot and additional healing from the smiting prayers monk makes playing a melee caster a non-issue. Damage is also decent, the team just lacks some party-wide IMS. The player will be ahead due to Drunken MasterEotNNo Profession. Deldrimor rank Drunken MasterStanceFor 72..90 seconds, your movement and attack speeds are increased by 10..15%. If you are drunk while activating this Skill, your movement and attack speeds are increased by 25..33% instead.
PvE only.560 and GustFactionsElementalist. Air Magic 12GustElite Enchantment SpellFor 10 seconds, both you and target ally move 33% faster. When you cast this spell, all foes near you and your target take 59 cold damage. Foes struck by Gust while attacking or moving are knocked down.10¾10, forcing him to wait before engaging the next foes unless they're mainly physicals which he can blind before getting killed. Nice little bonus: Rangers won't use Throw DirtCoreRanger. Expertise Throw DirtSkillTarget touched foe and foes adjacent to your target become Blinded for 3..13..16 seconds.5130 on an elementalist. 06:16 the second time playing this team build. Test video here.

Thirsty River: /age 11 is neither particularly good nor bad. The team is stable, but certainly too defensive for prophecies in its current layout. Dust TrapPropheciesRanger. Wilderness Survival Dust TrapTrapWhen Dust Trap is triggered, every second (for 5 seconds total), all nearby foes are Blinded for 3..7..8 seconds and take 10..22..26 damage. While activating this skill, you are easily interrupted. Dust Trap ends after 90 seconds.25230s were a bit annoying.

The Wilds: The wind riders were annoying, but not particularly troublesome. Scarabs died in the AoE quickly and wouldn't have been dangerous anyway due to Psychic InstabilityFactionsMesmer. Fast Casting 13Psychic InstabilityElite Spell Interrupts the target foe's action. If that action is a skill, that foe and all nearby foes are knocked down for 4 seconds. (50% failure chance with Fast Casting 4 or less.)50.112. Very good result.

Haiju Lagoon: No issues with surviving or killing. The pressure looked dangerous, but that was only the BiP supporting the team while hexed.

War in Kryta: With Shadow and Carlotta, /age 7. Again the layers of defense combined well enough to keep the team very stable even against three teams at once – to be fair, two teams at once, but when the first was down the third arrived. BiP got killed by a Splinter WeaponFactionsRitualist. Channeling Magic Splinter WeaponWeapon SpellFor 20 seconds, target ally has a Splinter Weapon. Target ally's next 1..4..5 attacks deal 5..41..53 damage to up to 3 adjacent foes.515 BarrageCoreRanger. Marksmanship BarrageElite Bow AttackAll your Preparations are removed. Shoot arrows at target foe and up to 6 foes adjacent to your target. These arrows strike for +5..17..21 damage if they hit.51 ranger once, but those just hit extremely hard. I'm content with the result.

Skyward Reach: Killing was too slow because of all the blocking, so I decided to replace "I Am Unstoppable!"EotNNo Profession. Norn rank "I Am Unstoppable!"ShoutFor 16..20 seconds, you have +24 armor and cannot be knocked down or Crippled.
PvE only.530 with Asuran ScanEotNNo Profession. Asura rank Asuran ScanHex SpellFor 9..12 seconds your attacks cannot miss target foe. Killing a foe hexed with Asuran scan removes 5% death penalty.
PvE only.55 in the crystal desert. That should make playing against enchanted hammers and Dust TrapPropheciesRanger. Wilderness Survival Dust TrapTrapWhen Dust Trap is triggered, every second (for 5 seconds total), all nearby foes are Blinded for 3..7..8 seconds and take 10..22..26 damage. While activating this skill, you are easily interrupted. Dust Trap ends after 90 seconds.25230 scarabs less annoying, too. Hydras are no issue thanks to two heroes with party healing, a domination mesmer and the ST prot. I conclude: This team has good to very good results in all 6 test areas, can be recommended to other players and (unless further tests reveal remarkably better teams) deserves a 5/5 rating.

Rating: 5 effectivity, 5 universality. Player build used for the tests: Build:E/A Dagger Spammer – variant: ShockwaveFactionsElementalist. Earth Magic ShockwaveElite SpellAll foes in the area take 15..51..63 earth damage and are weakened for 1..8..11 second. Nearby foes also take +15..51..63 earth damage and have Cracked Armor for 1..8..11 second. Adjacent foes suffer the previous effects, take +15..51..63 earth damage, and are Blinded for 1..8..11 second.10115

Team - 5 Hero Mesmerway (talk · rate)

Tested by ZStepmother (talk)

General info: I chose to not play the optimal build, because this is more representative for the casual player. I wasn't really pushing for time, otherwise I would've done a lot of things differently. There were some fights where some form of Blind would shine, but that wouldn't have been necessary if I didn't run such a bad build myself. These tests made me notice that Splinter Weapon is not really useful for most 6 Man content, but it can really shine in WiK because of the higher density of mobs. Of course, if you actually flag heroes, pull and bodyblock every fight, it could see some decent use, but I don't think that is a playstyle that suits everyone. I think this is the best general teamcomp for 6 Man areas.

Zen Daijun: I wasn't really trying too much. Even with a bad player build it was easy. Died once because healer decided to run to the furthest enemy to cast on him. Nearly wiped because I intenionally ran into a group with 3 eles while Shelter was on cooldown and not active. Final fight was a bit messy because I didn't want to put too much effort into this. Video: https://youtu.be/y0OA_U9nZak

Thirsty River: Would've been a lot easier if I ran a build that was actually useful. I often didn't notice that my heroes weren't helping because I was attacking from max distance (flatbow, not really optimal). Video: https://youtu.be/vhSjVBjUjQ4

The Wilds: Same comment on the player build here. Video: https://youtu.be/nHDtESnPTWE

Haiju Lagoon: Finally my build could show it's "strength". Video: https://youtu.be/Ii_4pkBniy0

War in Kryta: WiK provides bigger groups so my build could "shine" again. Replaced 1 ESurge with Panic because this content is more difficult for some people, and it helps mitigate the damage loss because of my weak build. Video: https://youtu.be/nHOJRTxhLGw

Skyward Reach: Again, performance suffers because of player build. At the end of the centaurs, I managed to get a decent ball on me, so at least Barage saw good use. Still, would've been so much easier with a decent player build. Also, this run made me notice how dumb hero AI is when it meets Chaos Storm. Video: https://youtu.be/PetWdsTPgPY

Player build used for the tests: OwJikxjMtYgrpa8WKTq/UDuICA

General info: To be absolutely sure the team performs as expected, I completed the tests again, with a player build that is not entirely trash. As expected, the foes that gave me some trouble were cut down like paper.

Zen Daijun: 6:43, got blown up by the initial ele spike (north of temple double group), but mesmers wiped them out the second after, so not a big deal. Did few runs, all pretty smooth. Afflicted eles are still very scary tho.

Thirsty River: Not a challenge at all. Was age 10, could've been age 9 easily, but my greed put some heroes in danger so I had to slow down a bit.

The Wilds: Everything went down with ease. Scarabs get spiked really quickly thanks to ESurge and CoF.

Haiju Lagoon: Not a challenge. Accidently aggroed entire village at the boss, wiped but still took down half of them. Too much sustained damage (auto attacks, spirits, rangers) for the healer to handle, but if you put in a little more effort than me they don't pose a threat at all.

War in Kryta: Age 6 Cerris, forgot to take Panic, but that matters a little bit less if the player build isn't absolutely trash. Accidently overaggroed and got myself killed, and then the ST, but team managed to clean it up anyway. Killed myself at Cerris because of facetanking the Death Nova minion army combined with SPain. Noticed I could really make use of Splinter here, perhaps this is a location where you could swap a mesmer for a SoS + resto rit, both for extra heals (which can really help against WiK groups) and the AoE of Splinter.

Skyward Reach: Chopped through the enemies with ease.

Player build used for the tests: OwpjMyp86QAYaXXXhZvl6P1gLiA

Rating: 5 effectivity, 5 universality. I've done some of these test runs multiple times with a different player build, and I think I can claim that this is the best general teambuild for 6 Man areas I've used so far.

Obviously you sometimes miss a blind, but if you don't want to swap runes, weapons and builds every area you can just play a bit more careful.

Splinter is really useful, but it often gets wasted because the groups are simply too small, and I don't think it's worth taking over a third mesmer. For areas with a big groups (WiK areas for example), I can totally see it outperforming the third mesmer, but in general I don't think you should take it. Maybe other tests will prove Splinter is the better option.

One big thing I noticed in all the runs I've done, is that the BiP seems to have a bad habit of casting Blood Bond while he should be healing instead, resulting in someone dieing. Maybe it is safer to replace Blood Bond with something else, if the BiP is the only healer. Could be bias tho.

Edit: Further proof: Team easily handles WoC HM, see https://youtu.be/2s656-xrmYQ (Cleansing Zen Daijun HM)